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Tolkien's Middle-earth doesn't look like Medieval Europe

© Michael Martinez

One of the Internet's Great Debates concerns how Middle-earth appears. Usually we ask, "Is Middle-earth medieval?", but the question should really be, "Does Middle-earth look medieval?" To J.R.R. Tolkien it did not, but apparently to Peter Jackson it does. One of my concerns about the movies is that Jackson is severely influenced by the medieval interpretation of John Howe. Howe is a great artist but a terrible Tolkien interpreter. He has reduced Tolkien's panoramic vision of a lost ancient world to a misapplication of medieval Europe. There are aspects of Tolkien's world which are derived from medieval influences, but few if any of them are actually visual. The medievalisms come most often in story ideas, such as Bilbo's theft of the cup from Smaug's hoard, the story of Turin Turambar, etc. The one aspect of Middle-earth most people seem to feel is derived from Anglo-Saxon England is, in fact, nothing of the sort. I refer to the Rohirrim. Tolkien used Anglo-Saxon to represent the language of Rohan, and many people assume this means the Anglo-Saxons were the model for the Rohirrim. A couple of years ago I examined the Anglo-Saxon myth in Things You Might Not Have Known About the Northmen, an essay for the collection Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, Revised Edition. The key points of the argument include these facts: the Anglo-Saxons were a seafaring people, whereas the Rohirrim don't even appear to use boats; the Rohirrim have a culture built entirely around horses, whereas the Anglo-Saxons didn't have much of a horse tradition at all (and most of what we know about the Anglo-Saxons' use of horses came to light after Tolkien devised the Rohirrim); the Anglo-Saxons were derived from numerous peoples and tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, and a few others), whereas the Rohirrim began as a remnant of a greater nation but were always a cohesive and single tribe; and the Anglo-Saxons were generally poorly armed, equipped, and organized compared to the highly trained and professional army of the Rohirrim. This latter point has been the subject of numerous discussions on The White Council (search the archives), as well as alt.fan.tolkien and rec.arts.books.tolkien. Just how professional was the army of Rohan? People are are quick to point out that King Harold had a small professional force that he led about England, defending his realm against Vikings and Normans alike, reinforcing his army with local levies called fyrds.